After spending a few days in the modern city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, I kept going my way towards the city of San Cristobal de las Casas. I huge and heavy climb was waiting for me, but fortunately in the last few years they have built a new highway that reduced the distance and the difficulty of the road immensely. Luckily I passed the toll booth simply by waving to the person there and I rode indifferently and immune to the indications of the signs that explicitly prohibited the use of bicycles.

As I knew that I had several kilometers to climb (bah, all of them!) I started very early to avoid the crushing heat that I had experienced the previous days. But even though I tried to prevent it, the difficulties of the road made me go slower than expected. A flat tire was my first forced stop and while I fixed it up, I discovered that my rear wheel was out of alignment. Dangerously settled on the shoulder, I dedicated myself to take care of Maira and the hours kept passing by. When I got back on the pedals, the sun was already baking my head and the rest of the way turned into an endless search for shades where I could be able to rest a little and to give a rest to the charred skin.

Signs recommended drivers “To use the extreme right”. At the beginning I thought that it was some ominous political propaganda, but quickly understood that it was so that the narrow road was a little ampler and consequently “my” lane of circulation was used with impunity by whichever vehicle moved that way and, on top of that, supported by the law. In consequence, not only I had to fight with the fatigue of the ascent and the exhausting heat, but also the fact that I had to constantly have my sight on the rear-view mirror to avoid getting smashed against in the defenses that were to the sides of the road. What a delight!

The clouds united in my defense and when it arrived at the highest point of the route and shortly before descending a short section towards the city, rain refreshed me a little… perhaps more than I had wished!

San Cristóbal de las Casas turned out to be a fascinating city. With a huge contrast between the massive tourism that invaded the streets of the impeccable and colorful colonial center and the indigenous traditional culture of the local inhabitants and the bordering towns. It was a very particular communion in which the visitors crossed the place with sophisticated digital cameras in their hands and the villagers walked around adorned in their colorful traditional dresses selling woven wristbands at 5 dollars each, at least if one knew how to haggle. One could taste Espresso in bars adapted to the taste of the European visitor or become lost in the countless food stands in the regional market.

The religious atmosphere could be felt everywhere and a great catholic fervor flooded the place. It was Palm Sunday and the women and children built with matchless skills the palms that where then sold by a few pesos to be blessed in the multiple religious ceremonies that were being carried out. The churches adorned with their architecture the different parks and corners of the city and the flow of believers were incessant. The locals were intermingled with the tourists who were eager to register these customs with their indiscreet cameras. The plaza was bursting with the food stands offering meals to the peregrines. While people rendered cult to their saints with prayers and reverences, foreigners with reminiscences of hippies danced and juggled with fire to the sound pagan music in front of the cathedral. It was a racial, cultural and beliefs mixture in which everyone was immersed in its world, totally indifferent of what was happening around them.

I spent days in this fascinating place captivated by the contrasts that were found in the atmosphere. The family of Maricruz, wife of the director of the SOS Children’s Village in Morelia, had welcomed me in its home and it didn’t take time for me to become one more in the family. With Doña Trini, who insisted on feeding me constantly as if she was my mother, and the anecdotes of Don Tito, the days flew by. Great part of the family was reunited for the Passover celebrations, so I had the opportunity to meet many of them.

Among the sightseeing tours that I did in the area, the visit to Chamula was one of the more memorable one. In that indigenous little town, about 10 km away from San Cristóbal, there was a church that although from the outside did not have anything that looked different from a traditional catholic temple; its inside was out of this world. The natives had combined the cults from their own culture with the catholic rites in a non-orthodox way for someone not used to it. The strong incense scent invaded the senses immediately, inebriating with its sweet aroma. The candles covered the floor where the people gathered and using their particular dialect they made songs and prayers that were accompanied by food, alcohol and Coca-Cola (!!). The sacrificed hens used to expulse some malignant spirit were a common sight and the saints surrounded the place enclosed in their display cabinets, watching with their fierce and inquisitive eyes and dressed with successive layers of traditional clothes that were thickening their bodies year by year. This peculiar panorama was still more bizarre when seeing the tourists, who circulated between the devotee with expressions of astonishment and incredulity, containing their anxieties to take a photo to show their friends, since it was specifically prohibited to register anything that happened inside the doors of the church.

San Cristóbal was also the place where I met again with my friend Japhy. We had coincided in time and space and we decided to face together the section of Chiapas and Guatemala, which had a ry bad fame concerning security. After an effusive goodbye with his “something more than a friend” Denisse, we faced the road towards Palenque. We rode between forests of pines and alpine landscapes until we descended gradually with an abrupt change in the vegetation. The green color upholstered the hills and jungle-like plants were taking over the terrain. Between that exuberant nature one would always see houses or little shacks from where occasionally children would come out demanding us while screaming that we gave them money: “give me a peso, give me a peso! ”, “no, a peso no, I’ll give you a kiss, do you want one?”. (Translator note: word-play in Spanish with peso/beso where beso=kiss). Obviously, my offer of affection never had a good welcome and more often I received scorn glances, but that was what I had to give…

While we passed by a small village, one lady prophesied to us, from the side of the road, that if we kept going that way, we would get robbed of everything. We hoped that she was not right! The tension and the nervousness generated by our security concerns had already settled in and it would not leave us for many kilometers.

Contradictorily, it often happened that as soon as we were being sighted by children they became excited and started to greet us with shouts of “hello, hello! ”, which in some cases was not appeased with our answers. It was necessary to shake hands and to give smiles that immediately were reflected back on their faces, while they continued screaming “holaaaa, hoooolaaaaa! “to the top of their lungs. It scared a little!

Before facing the final descent into Ocosingo we stopped at a viewpoint from where the green valley in which we were going into could be appreciated. A family that happened to pass by stopped to chat for a while with us. Juan Manuel and his family of Oxchuc demonstrated to us that not all the world was necessarily hostile in this place.

A fortuitous ambiguity in the selection of the road towards the center of Ocosingo left us in the doors of the headquarters of the Civil Defense. Shortly after, we were settled in with the guys, sharing dinner and chatting about our trips and their lives. Efraín told us a little about the revolutionary movement Zapatista and the Zapatista Army National Liberation (EZLN in Spanish). Until that moment, the only thing that I had seen about it was the commerce derived from its times of rebellion, represented by the dolls with knitted caps and all kind of souvenirs that can be imagined. But I had not been able to speak with someone that had really been involved in those days of January of 1994. Efraín told me that thanks to the upraise, the government finally decided to pay attention to some of the native’s reclamations that had been eternally delayed, but that the subject of land granting was not yet resolved and much was left to discuss before they could reach a solution. Although in many places the land had been taken back to work it and the posters with the sign “the land belongs to those that work it” abounded, legally it was not yet recognized by the authorities. Thus, in a climate of tense calm the negotiations to vindicate the rights of the peasantry continued. A right battle, considering that these communities have economies of subsistence and they need the land to obtain their food. 

But the following day we would feel in own skin the effects derived from this uprising. A little after leaving Ocosingo we arrived at the Municipio 1ro of January. Imposing and colorful murals upholstered the walls of the houses making it clear that that was zapatista territory. The image of the Che Guevara repeated endlessly side by side with the image of the Subcomandante Marcos. We didn’t doubt it and we stopped to take some photos. It was an art expression that couldn’t pass unnoticed. What we did not realize was that people watched us with unfriendly faces. Without us noticing two boys approached, they stared at us and with clear intentions that we leave the place or else… we got the message high and clear and we returned immediately to our bikes and we started to roll. People shouted “gringos “to us accompanied by some other insults while we responded that we were not: “we are Argentine! Che Guevara” we managed to say while we passed by in between the people. Japhy had quickly adopted the Argentine nationality since it didn’t make much sense in that context to explain that he was from Nepal.

Minutes before, while we were watching one of the murals, Japhy had told me the story of two American cyclists who a year ago had been assaulted and struck with machetes while they crossed that same place. The same 8 kilometers-climb was waiting for us in the middle of a dense forest and we knew that the attackers could appear form anywhere to ransack us without a problem. We felt very vulnerable and we wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. It was a very tense route, where each little sound that we heard got us in state of maximum alert. You could push us a little for us to lose our balance and we were at the mercy of that anyone that would want to rob us. My gringo appearance did not help at all and we knew that very well…

Fortunately we passed through that section without difficulties, but the thing did not finish there. While we descended a hill at full speed we saw children who grouped themselves to the flank of the way and who suddenly raised a rope that blocked our way. We hit the brakes just in time to avoid it and as soon as we got a foot on the ground, they surrounded to us with insistent requests to buy things from them, to give them money or anything that we took in ours bikes. They were very aggressive and when we said no, that they should let us pass, a girl started to kick my back panniers while she sounded like a hissing cat. A little bit frightened and confounded by the lived experience we slipped by and hit the pedals as hard as we could fleeing from those kids who seemed possessed by the evil of necessity.

The hostile glances appeared all day long and we didn’t feel safe even to stop long enough for peeing at the side of the road! We did not have a clear idea of where we were going to spend the night and all this situation had left us somewhat paranoids. We ended up descending to the Agua Azul waterfalls, where a very relaxed atmosphere was not necessarily the one we found, but because it was Easter Saturday, it was saturated of people and that gave us a little more anonymity and protection. Each square centimeter of the place was occupied by a vehicle and dozens of tents populated the forests with families who were eating and drinking to the sound of the omnipresent loud songs of popular Norteña music. We intermingled with the multitude, we set up our tents and after sightseeing the little waterfalls we took refuge in our tents to try to sleep a bit.    

The “descent” to Palenque had a few and unexpected climbs, but the landscape was so captivating with the unfolding of vegetation that blinded with its green color, the aroma of wet dirt and the sounds of the birds, that for a moment one could forget the human factors and enjoy the natural surroundings a little more. We were surprised by the change of attitude in people towards us. Not only their clothes had become more colorful and attractive, but that also their attitude was different. Now they responded to our greetings with smiles and cordiality. We were confused! Thus we learned to evaluate the atmosphere of the place where we were passing by in function of the answer that people gave to our greetings and smiles. We became the “greeting cyclists” since we did not leave a person in sight without a warm and affectionate “good morning” or “good afternoon”, accordingly.

The town of Palenque did not offer any attractiveness beyond being a commercial center where to get supplies, so we went to the campgrounds that abounded in the neighborhood of the famous Mayan ruins. After a fortuitous encounter with Ralph and Pat, the American cyclists whom I’d met in Lake Louise last August, we landed in Mayabell. It was a place where all the hippies of the world seemed to had come together, that pacifically spent their hours lying in hammocks under palapas to the sound of bongos. A mysterious fog circulated between the tents which aroma was easily recognizable. A brief walk was all that was needed to get on a space trip without the necessity of a spaceship!

Just as we arrived a torrential rain started and we were forced to set our tents up very tightly under one of palapas, unless we wanted to get drenched in just a matter of minutes. We were safely under cover and to the joy of Japhy, he got to meet with Denisse again during the days that we were there. That night I discovered the powerful sound of the howling monkeys that gave a mysterious and scary air to the jungle that surrounded to us. Their powerful guttural shouts gave the impression to be immersed in the fiction of Jurassic Park, on the verge of being devoured by a hungry velociraptor. Or were the “howling monkeys” that I had in the neighboring tent the ones that made those strange sounds at night?

The ruins of Palenque fulfilled all the expectations that we had for the place: they were imposing and they gave an exact idea of the degree of cultural and religious advancement that the Mayan culture had reached. The reconstruction of the site allowed admiring the original architecture and in spite of the souvenirs and crafts stands, one could always find a place where to contemplate and meditate peacefully about this fascinating civilization.

These were the last days in Mexico. After almost 4 months and with more than 5000 kilometers riding its roads, the end of a stage approached. I was closing the North American section of to enter the convulsioned Central America. Like in all the previous countries, the next one was going to be more violent, more dangerous and where they were certainly going to rob and kill us. In this case they could be right since the situation in Guatemala did not seem to be the ideal to be traveling by bicycle and it was necessary to be alert at all times. On top of that, we had chosen to enter the country by crossing the Usumacinta River, through the Lacandon Jungle and directly to the Petén, a zone that had fame for registering numerous assaults and robberies to tourists. Would we have that luck too?

The road towards the Corozal border went by without big problems. We only had to cross a check point protesting the political prisoners of the EZLN where they demanded us 2 dollars to as a toll to be able to pass. “Two dollars! No my brother, we are not foreign, we are Argentine and we don’t have money.” We gave them 5 Mexican pesos (a quarter of the solicited amount) and between laughter and greetings we took off leave remembering that the “Che” also had been Argentine… thank heavens!

The atmosphere was not as tense as we expected and we had good responses to our greetings. In a stop that we made by a creek to appease the intense heat that overwhelmed in the afternoon, a man who happened to pass by with his kids stopped to chat for a while. He was a farmer and he was coming back from picking beans to feed his family. Surely to see us was something much more interesting and amusing that any other activity and as if we were part of an exotic zoo, he simply remained seated with his children observing us with a kind smile in his face. We didn’t know what to do. We were eating and we felt a little strange, seating with the legs in the water, with our unfolded water filters, plastic containers and technological gadgets that were probably unknown to them. We tried to maintain a conversation but the man was laconic. They didn’t ask us the usual thousand and one questions. They simply continued watching us. I shared some chocolate cookies with the boys and after thanking us for the company we continued our march. We would later get used to the fact of simply being observed without any words said…

The Lancadon Jungle revealed itself towards the end of the day. All along we had circulated around areas destined to agriculture or to the cattle and there was not much left of the impenetrable forest that we had imagined that we would cross. The night came above us and we got ourselves into the difficult task of finding a place to spend the night. It was not as simple as to set up the tent in the middle of the jungle. In these places it was necessary to find some clean site and without trees to avoid being visited by the noxious animals that roamed the place, in particular the not so friendly serpents. We made an attempt in the military regiment that was in the crossroad to New Palestine, but they rejected us emphatically. Using an incredible bureaucracy and after checking thousand of times who we were and what we were doing, they said us that they had to ask permission to the commander, who of course, was not there. Thanks boys!

Luckily, Don Israel, the owner of a nearby store-bar-restaurant offered us an abandoned small c and we didn’t doubt a second in settling in and sharing the night with the innumerable friends of the world of the insects that populated the shack. But we don't look a gift horse in the mouth!!! (translator note: “a caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes” spanish proverb meaning that one doesn’t look at the bad things a present might have)

On March 27th at noon we arrived at the Corozal border, in the margins of the Usumacinta River. We were near the ruins of Bonampak and Yaxchilán, a reason why the flow of tourists already had affected the zone and we were victims of an impulsive toll on the part of lacandonians. They charged us 15 Mexican pesos for nothing in return, beyond the “control paper” that was going to be demanded by the authorities when we wanted to cross the border. Of course, they never requested anything form us and it was one of the many economic abuses that we suffered along the way. The place was gray and sad, in tone with the clouds that covered the sun. We could not see a single smile in the dull people who populated the site. The immigration officer warned us that it was not safe to ride from La Tecnica, the neighboring town on the Guatemalan side, to Bethel, where there was an immigration office, since the road was very bad and was dangerous due to robberies. “Look, that’s not longer Mexico and anything can happen to you”. As if there we were exempt from having troubles!!! The economic cost was very high and we decided to verify with our own eyes how serious the matter was. It was not question to chicken out to 12 kilometers of gravel!

Few minutes later we were across of the river and had left our beloved Mexican people that so many joys and satisfactions had given us. A succession of countries was coming, relatively fast to cross, with many cultural and geographic differences to explore. We were anxious to discover those new horizons.

Guatemala received us with stairs that made us sweat to pick up the loaded bikes and a dirt road that in effect, was in terrible state. Loose stones, holes, bumps, sand, continuous climbs and descents with extreme slopes; those were our first 12 kilometers in this new country. We passed through a pair of towns in which we were heartbroken seeing the precarious way in which people lived. Our passing was observed like someone would if sees a loaded spaceship with green beings stopping by. I don’t believe that many cyclists ventured themselves into these lost roads in the jungle…

Surprisingly we did not have any trouble with the migratory proceedings and they didn’t charge us anything contrary to what other travelers had said to us, whom they had had to pay arbitrary amounts of money to enter Guatemala at that crossing point. Surely they took pity on us when they saw our lamentable state, totally sweated and covered with dirt!

According to the officials, 30 kilometers of gravel were waiting for us before reaching the pavement that would lead us to Tikal, our next objective in the itinerary. We began early, but the progress was very slow due to the road conditions. As we advanced we were wishing more and more that the pavement arrived for once, since we were baking under a sun without contemplations and a total absence of shade. Of the Petén jungle not even its memory was left in this area that had not been reached by the protective limits of the natural reserves. Just after 65 tumbling kilometers we recovered the stability under our seats and stopped in the first town that we saw to eat something. We devoured half a roasted chicken each and with the sleepiness of a full stomach and the heat of afternoon we went back to the pedals slowly. Very slowly!

Asking in a crossroad towards La Libertad, our objective for that day, a conversation that would be a constant in the coming days occurred:

“Hello, good afternoon! The way to La Libertad,”
“Hello to mister” (answer in English)
“Excuse me, we are not gringos, we are Argentine and we speak Spanish”
“Ah, Argentina? I lived there like three years”
“Seriously? Where?”
“In Miami”
“Errr, that is in the United States. I told you that we weren’t gringos.”
“Ah, well, yes… and do they speak English in Argentina?”
“No, I told you that we speak Spanish. Do you know where Argentina is?”
“Mmmm, no”

After a patient class of basic geography and when seeing that we couldn’t get anywhere, we chose to keep going and while we biked away we heard that they waved to us while saying: “we’ll see you in Wachinton” Ohmmmmmm….

In Guatemala the possibility of camping freely like we did in Mexico was totally discarded since the insecurity level was much higher. Luckily the costs were smaller and hotel room could be obtained by a few quetzals. Of course, the term hotel was applied indifferently to places that made honor to that denomination, as well as to holes in the wall in which the cockroaches were those that make the beds. Sometimes one dollar generated an abysmal difference in the service that was offered and was worth the trouble to check the places before picking one. Bartering was part of the local culture, so the prices could always be changed a little, and that way we had more money left for the meals.  

In La Libertad we remained in El Oriental, a comfortableand clean place where in addition we could eat something in its restaurant. There, the first Guatemalan newspaper fell in our hands and we froze up when we read the news. The blood poured from its pages and what caught our attention was the cover note: “they assassinate him to rob the bicycle”. He was a poor shoemaker with a common bike of the brand “Maya Tour “, the most popular in the area. Definitively the capital city would be outside our itinerary after seeing such news.

Going towards Tikal we passed by the tourist refuge of Flores. It did not have the usual chaos of shops and stands in the streets and its most attractive thing of this small island was without a doubt the lake that surrounded it, the Petén Itzá. In its waters we took advantage of to cool off from the exhausting noon heat before we continued search of the greatest recovered Mayan ruins that can be visited at the present time.

We learned the hard way that in Guatemala road signs indicating the direction of travel didn’t exist and it was still more difficult to find something that gave at least an approximated distance. It was necessary to ask in each road crossing, learning the names of the countless small towns (that of course, never appeared in our maps) and to consider the probability of error in the obtained information according to our interlocutor. Thus, when leaving Flores we knew that we had to travel a distance that went between 50 and 75 kilometers.

Of course, the greater distance prevailed. The climbs were steeper and longer than what we imagined and when arriving to the entrance of the Tikal National Park, the night was already on us. We had another 17 kilometers until the campground, circulating on a road flanked by the jungle in its Maxima expression. In the penumbra we could see the non-traditional posters that gave notice of the somewhat worrisome animal presence: snakes, jaguars, scorpions… it seemed that we were entering a zone not for humans! When the darkness surrounded us completely we were perplex to see the amount of “eyes” that were observing us. “Watch out! There’s something over there!”. “Another one! There”. After brief moments of paranoia we realized that the potential animals that were watching us were not other than countless fireflies that, when we got close, they flashed their greenish lights, making us think that we were observed by a multitude of hungry wild animals. Nevertheless we continued with great precautions since we did not want to step on some lethal viper that might have been crossing the road then.

Tikal turned out to be excessively expensive and corrupt. The entrance ticket cost the small fortune of 20 dollars and although the park opened at 6 in the morning, by a reasonable “contribution” it was possible coordinate with the guard to enter earlier and to see the dawn from the top of one of the temples. Everything was negotiable and had a price. Even when we wanted to take photos with the bikes, they wanted get extra money from us! Obviously, neither we saw the dawn from the ruins nor we entered with the bikes. It turned out rather complicated to obtain a safe place where to leave our things while we toured the place.

In contrast with Palenque, in Tikal the excavated ruins are dispersed in the depths of the jungle, a reason why it was difficult to have a notion of the total surface of the architectonic complex. Nevertheless, the advantage was that it was rare the time that one ran into massive contingents of tourists and therefore one could enjoy the site with great tranquility. And as the nearest town was 20 kilometers away, there weren’t any souvenir stands. The central plaza was very imposing with the main Temple, unmistakable icon of the Mayan pyramids, and Temple V definitively took the crown for best the panoramic view of the jungle canopy with the top of the highest temples showing in between the trees. This last one was the only one which had very good information about the history and restoration of the lofty pyramid, thanks to the work made by the government of Spain.

Coming back we repeated the formulas that had already given us good results: take a dip when passing by Flores and stay at the same hotel in La Libertad. While we had supper we met Luis Miguel. Interested on our trip he said like a passing comment: “I also am an adventurer”. “Yes? And how is that”. And he told us his story. He was school teacher, but his wage of 1500 quetzals per month (about 200 dollars) was not sufficient to maintain his family, with a 5 year old boy and another one of 10 months. So, he was about to cross into Mexico, where later he would cross the country as a stowaway in cargo trains until finally arriving at the border with the United States. There, he hoped to be able to be picked up by his relatives to enter illegally into the “north” and to work for a couple of years while saving the money necessary to assure his family a worthy living. Luis Miguel was only 23 years old and lived the crude reality that has shaken the neediest people for years and was affected by the poor economy of their countries of origin. And all this he told us in an amazing natural way. We felt indignant, impotent and very small in our reality that was so distant from what he had to live. But nevertheless, he was proud of the fact that we were three adventurers. I gave him my last Mexican coin and I said that he should save it as a lucky charm. If we had ridden those roads without problems, we could share our star symbolically, wishing him to arrive at a good port. We left hoping that someday he would wrote us from its mother country telling us that he was well and that did not need to emigrate forced by economic reasons. It was a utopia for sure…

The following day was full of uncertainties. We had to arrive at some place where we could stay at but the information we had was a little vague. After Sayaxché, about 50 kilometers of where we were, we didn’t know if there were hotels and the next safe place was in Ruxahá, 100 kilometers ahead. That was a very long distance to consider, so we left with the hope to find something halfway.

Soon after starting I surpassed the 15000 kilometers on the road. Japhy gladly lent me the 5 fingers that I lacked for the photo of rigor, and still a little incredulous about the distance accumulated in my legs, we continued our march.

While arriving at Sayaxché a mass at the side of the road made us stop hard: it was an enormous snake that was coiled as it it was ready to attack! It took a good while for us to overcome the fear and to realize that somebody had already taken care of the subject and with a clean cut of a machete had ended the life of the reptile. We could not believe its length and just to think that one like that could appear while we stop to rest made the hairs at the back of our necks to stand up! Brrrrr…

After crossing the Sayaxché Rivero towards the town of the same name in a rudimentary ferry, we stopped to escape the intense heat in the active town. We continued investigating, but it seemed that there were no places where to spend the night until Ruxahá. Would it be like that? We went into a road where the towns that we passed by were absolutely precarious, including no electrical power. Our desperation to have something cold to drink made us discover the “raspados”, that were basically pricked ice with an artificial thick syrup that gave them color and flavor, with a topping of honey or condensed milk. Not bad, by the way. And to the reasonable price of one quetzalito!

Our fears were confirmed when we found out that indeed, there was no lodging until Ruxahá. We had ridden 100 kilometers and still had 50 more to go, getting us into a mountainous area that promised to complicate the advance. We did not have an option and we had to hurry since we knew that it was madness close to stupidity to ride at night. Everywhere they had told us that although it was dangerous to ride by day, at night was simply unthinkable. And it was not an exageration in a place where all businesses were closed at 6 pm and not a soul is seen in the streets after 8 pm.

We quickly verified that early evening was not the best moment of the day to be rolling through the area towns. People gathered in front of their homes to take advantage of the relative coolness and the children had returned from school. In other words, we were the target of all the glances and immediately began to roar in our ears the shouts of “Gringo! Gringo!” intermingled with requests for “donations” and insults that we already recognized in spite of not being part of our vocabulary. The descents were fast and the climbs were agonizing and tense. We felt uncomfortable and threatened and it wasn’t worth to give explanations. Some expressions said it all and it was not a propitious place for us.

The muscles hurt, the crossroad would never arrive and the fatigue added to the stress of the situation was killing us. But we did not have an alternative and the night was already with us. At least it helped to make us unnoticed for the last kilometers until we finally arrived at Ruxahá and we got into the first hotel that we found. We were happy to have survived, but physically and mentally done.

We knew that we faced a physical challenge in capital letters: we would leave the relatively flat extensions of the Petén behind us and we would go into in the heart of the Sierra Madre range, which promised to defy the force of our legs to unsuspected limits. For that reason we took an easy day and we stayed hanging out in the exhausting heat of Chisec, getting ready for the climb to Cobán, coffee center of the country.

Reality again surpassed our expectations and what we hoped to be hard turned out to be hardest! As a welcome sign, we had to surpass the “window” crossing, a passage between mountains in which the road climbed scandalously, wedging itself into an overwhelming green area, with continuous climbs with more of 20% slope that reduced our advancement to an agonizing snail pace. The worse thing was that after such climb, the pavement dropped off into a steep descent that looked like the initial drop of a rollercoaster, generating vertigo and defying the laws of the gravity! The brakes couldn’t keep up and luckily there wasn’t much traffic, since very sharp turns forced us to cross form one side of the road to the other all the time. When we saw that we were at the same altitude that we had in Chisec and we still had left the real climb to Cobán we almost started to cry!

The heat became present and it was necessary to start with forced stops to rest a little. Without mattering where we stopped, we didn’t spend two minutes without somebody coming out of the jungle with the infaltable machete in hand. Its sound cutting weeds or firewood was an inherent characteristic of the place and it was strange to us when we didn’t hear it. We were entering into the indigenous region of Guatemala, where there are 23 different ethnic groups with their noticeable and well differentiated cultural identities. The clothes were an immediate indicative of the origin of the people and the identity of the original languages stayed intact. For us it was a true tongtwister but we always asked how to greet in the local dialect to be able to interact with people. But the problem was that the ethnic groups varied from one valley to another and suddenly, a phrase that generated answers and smiles on one side of the hill fell into total indifference when crossing to the other. When asking we would find out that our greeting was already obsolete and we had to use another one! The most accepted ones were “quanchic” and “usawatch” (whatever they are written) and after a moment we began to use our own greetings. We invented some, we used the traditional “namaste” of Nepal and almost always we received some answer, even if it was an incomprehensible growl said inwards. We trusted that it was a courteous answer and not an insult. It was fun for them to see some “gringos” on bikes speaking, or at least trying, in their indigenous dialect.

The comunión that they had with Nature, in which they lived immersed and respecting it, was evident in the cleaning of the highways. It had been a long time since we did not see highways so clean in our trip. Also, it became something common to see women and children carryinig containers with water or big firewood bundles on their heads. We never understood how they could maintain their balance or avoided to snap their spines with such loads! From kids of little age to people as wrinkled as raisins, all did the same tasks in a parade similar to worker ants.  

The kids continued having a particular fascination towards us and they didn’t stop calling us “gringos” when we passed by. As trying to explain our origin didn’t have much sense, we chose to reply back with “Guatemalan” that in general produced a confused look that sometimes had a laughable end.

“Gringo!”
“Guatemalan!”
“Guatemalan?”
“Yes, yes, Guatemalan!”
“Go Guatemala!! Ehhhhh!!!!”

and while we biked away it never failed to have a kid replying once again “gringo!” making us of laugh to death..

When too much time passed by without anybody shouting something to us we began to say things between us: “Gringo!”, “Argentinean!”, “Nepalese!”, “Sudaca!”, “Bajadur” ( the equivalent to sudaca for Japhy) and thus we passed the time in front the of astonished glance of the people who happened to hear us in such exchanges.

In an occasion we stopped in bar to drink something other than our over heated water and the kids from the place, when seeing us in a state of calamitous exhaustion, asked us:

“And why are you going by bicycle? Isn’t it tiresome? It’s better in microbus”
“Errr, we are going to Argentina”
“Ah, and there is no microbus to get there”
“Errr, no, there’s not. And if there were it would be very expensive. For that reason we go by bike”

We arrived at Cobán totally exhausted, after climbing more than 2000 meters with the greatest average slope since the beginning of the trip, but happy for having passed the hard test. And that was because we didn’t know what was waiting for us for the next days until getting to Quetzaltenango!

Looking at the distances on a map, they did not seem to be too long so we could be arriving in about three days at the second largest city of Guatemala. Nevertheless, the endless climbs and descents that waited for us would turn all our estimations and projections into impossible fantasies. Every day we set ourselves a goal that, as we advanced, turned more unreal and unattainable. Our advance seemed like a regressive count in which each day diminished 10 or 15 kilometers with respect to the previous one.

Like a welcome sign to this tiresome section of the road, we ran into one long descent that was being paved, a reason why it was a total chaos of heavy machinery, trucks, blinding dust in the air and rocks as large as a car that defied our skills of manouvering to maximum. We were doing extreme cycling! In a section they told us directly that it was not possible to pass since they were removing rocks and the transit was closed for another couple of hours. If we waited there we would never be able to climb the hill waiting for us across the river to arrive at Chicamás. So after negotiating for a while and assuring a worker that we would take resposability of anything that could happen to us (something that would had been unthinkable in other countries to the north), we were sent by a track that looked like a circuit in a crosscountry competition! Our first obstacle was not trivial and we had to carry the bikes through an impressive rock field! The worker on the bulldozer that was removing the dirt watched us with a mixture of fun and astonishment on his face when he saw us climbing and coming down on the other side with our heavy friends.

After that part we got back on the pavement which because it was new, it was impeccable and we began the slow and sluggish 20 kilometers that we had left to climb that day. We were ascending following a river bed, climbing little by little on the side of the canyon, leaving behind panoramic views that took our breath away more than the actual climb. The traffic was light and it allowed us to use the entire road to be able to climb zigzaging, reducing a little the slope that we had to climb. We were moving in that erratic way when we approached a man who watched us impassible from the road. “How far to Chicamás?”, “Half an hour by bike, but as you two go, at least one hour”. Definitively he probably thought that we were drunk…

Suddenly we heard and unmistakable and stimulant sound: the typical bells of an ice cream truck! We stopped pedaling and immediately stopped, making signs to the vehicle so that he would tend to us. Right there they sold us cones for a quetzalito and we continued our slow trip, now more refreshed and animated.

Like a divine punishment, the following day the road turned out to be dementially hard. Our idea was to ride the 50 kilometers until Sacapulas during the morning and to continue in the evening towards Chichicastenango. Obviously, we barely made it to Sacapulas! The climbs became endless and so steep that the multiplication factor of our gears was not enough to maintain the bikes moving. Eric, a cycling friend of Japhy that had already crossed these same roads had baptized them with certainty “Guatemala gear”: using the smallest plate with the biggest pinion. The “1-1” became a fixed gear and to change to a pair of pinions down was an event that deserved a party!

The worst thing about this roads, in addition to the enormous slopes that were stuck all along over 15%, it was the incredible sadism that seemed to have inspired the civil engineers to build the most winding and complicated roads possible. Once we reached the top and believing to be at the height of destination of the day, the highway would plunge frenetically into the first gorge that it could find and while we we descended we could already see the enormous that waited for us on the other side. And it was not once, but several! We got to hate the Guatemalan engineers with all of our heart! Never a bridge? A roundup to a hill? Was it always necessary to climb and to descent in a labyrinth of turns that upsetted even the person with the strongest stomach? There was no option and we had to keep pedaling little by little, unloading all our frustrations with insults of all type and color… aghhhh!

Meanwhile we continued crossing indigenous towns where the people watched us with incredulity at the same time they kept going with their ususal loads of firewood, water, taking their goats to eat, with hens and pigs crossing the road like in an endless corral, going from one place to the other by horse. Luckyly the vehicles were not abundant so they let us enjoy that spectacle in which the simple rural life was intermingled with the modern pavement.

The views of the valleys that we were crossing complemented the ride with green landscapes in which there seemed that not a single space was left without cultivating. We continued being a circus in movement and whenever we were sighted by a kid, it was already normal tfor us toseeing him go running to his house shouting to his siblings and relatives so that they did not miss the show. “Tlaque poque teque gringo” we used to hear. Only the words gringo or cyclist were familiar to us and we already knew what was waiting for us. Crowded over the fences and even into the distance, the shout of “gringo, gringo” sounded, and from where all hoped that we responded with an efusive greeting waving our hands. To pass in front of a school was to generate a small revolution in which all left what they were doing to explode into an incredible noise where the “gringo” word was the one that prevailed over all the others. At the outset it was an interesting and likeable experience, but with passing of the kilometers and the excessive reiteration of the scene it was tiring us a little… when would we pass by some place where they wouldn’t shout things to us?

In Sacapulas we did not find a very receptive atmosphere. We got a shack where to spend the night and a high degree of hostility was perceived, towards me in particular. Again I was the “gringo” in the wrong place. Luckily Japhy could intermingle with the locals more easily and be in charge of buying something to eat or to find out how to leave the following morning. It was one terrible night since the local market was setting up across the street and from 3 in the morning the flow of people and the noise level was incredible. A light truck blocked the door of our lodging and it was an odyssey to be able to get out through the commercial chaos that was growing around us. What madness!

We arrived at Santa Cruz of Quiche completely exhausted. I had a stomach flu that was draining my strength to the point of almost not being able to pedal and Japhy was incubating a good throat strept as if he was supporting my pathetic state. But we had to follow. We needed to arrive at Quetzaltenango, where we had a home where to take shelter and to recover from of such a trip

What was left was last push passing by the traditional and tourist city of Chichicastenango, the place par excellence to visit a typical crafts market. Unfortunately, we arrived a day behind schedule to see the unfolding of stands, but nevertheless the central square gave an accurate idea of what it would be like in the days of greater activity.

People told us that we had to face one climb with the cruelest characteristics: the climb of La Fortuna. This time they hand’t exaggerated and when we saw what was coming we didn’t know if to laugh or to cry! The road disappeared steeply in a gorge until getting to a river and soon it climbed like a vertical tape up the opposite side. The whine of the engines of the countless recycled school buses from the United States that circulated around the road told us clearly that it was not going to be easy to get to the summit. To make things worse, to the narrow road and to the steep slopes it was necessary to add the toxic factor, since absolutely all vehicle that drove in Guatemala seemed to be competing for the award to the worse internal combustion and the greater degree of expulsion of black smoke. In a macabre combination of factors, our slow advance was still more complicated by imprudent conductors who enjoyed passing as close to us as possible and to accelerate right in our faces, leaving us the present of a cloud that filled our lungs making us feel as if we had smoked 40 cigarettes at once!

After the enormous climb which extended eternally by a few more kilometers, we finally arrived at the crossing with the Pan-American Highway. We thought to spend the night there, but the chaos and the disorder that reigned in the place made us change of idea quickly. We chose to follow until the next town with available lodging and we went into in the highway. Our surprise was immediate: it was not a modern freeway and with wide lanes. We arrived in the middle of the process of expansion and road work so we went into a road in which asphalt sections alternated with dirt sectors which they looked like they were recently bombed. The transit was now heavy and the combination of smoke, dirt and horn blasts left us with our nerves in a state of misery. We got literally into a cloud that reduced our visibility to zero and the night fell without previous warning, causing our last kilometers to be loaded of aadrenalin and tension. When we arrived at Nahualá we couldn’t go anymore and without realizing we got into a purely indigenous town where we were observed with certain distrust. We were “gringos” out of place… and one could notice!

By the morning we could better appreciate the indigenous cultural epicenter in which we were immersed. Absolutely everybody was dressed with traditional clothes and they were going on their way to their daily tasks in the fields. Although we had already bacome accustomed to see this type of things, we could feel in the air the cultural identity of the people.

We were very close of our objective. We only had to surpass one more climb until… Alaska! Such was the name of the highest point on the highway that also turned out to be the highest in my trip until now, with 3033 msnm. The descent displayed the valley of Quetzaltenango to us in its entire splendor, crowned by the imposing Santa Maria Volcano, which gave us the welcome. Equally warm was the reception of Miriam Bartlett and her family, who offered their home to us so that we could rest for the first time in long time with family warmth.

Until the next time!

Good Trails,

Damián

The 35’s are coming!

 

I left with 33 years, in the Southeast of Alaska I turned 34 and this next Julio 18th I wil turn 35 in some place in Venezuela, age which I hope to arrive with when I return to Argentina. So to satisfy the enormous demand of shipments of small gifts for the occasion (at least that’s what I would like to believe), I have obtained two mailing adresses to which, according to the date and time of the postal service, you can send all the presents that you want!

 

Mérida, Venezuela (Estimated arrival July 10th)

Luis Daniel Llambí C. (Att. Damián López)
Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Ecológicas
Facultad de Ciencias, 3er Piso, Universidad de los Andes
La Hechicera
Mérida (5101)
VENEZUELA


Manaos, Brasil (Estimated arrival end of September)

Fabiola Valdez (Att. Damián López)
Av. Efigenio Salles 2222
Bloco 1B, Ap. 304
69060-020
Manaus - Amazonas
BRASIL

Thank you very much in advance!


Aknowledegements


To Oscar Isaack and Jolguer Martínez: for the interest in my trip and the gift of a refreshing bottle of water on the way to San Cristóbal de las Casas.


To doña Trinidad, don Tito and all your family: for living me a place to feel at home and like another one of the family during my days in en San Cristóbal de las Casas. Y and to Maricruz: for trusting me with her parents and siblings.


To Manuel Pérez Ruiz: for theinteresting conversation about the Tzotzil culture on my way to San Juan Chamula.


To Raúl Balam Pérez Velásquez; Thanks for the esponataneous and unselfish lift with your bike in San Cristóbal de las Casas.


To Juan Manuel Jiménez Santiz and his family, from Oxchuc: for the moments shared in the view point to Ocosingo.


To all the gang of Civil Defense in Ocosingo: Raúl Valdemar Molina González, Juan Núñez Cansino, Efraín Gañez González, Samuel Pérez Sánchez, Rodolfo Rodríguez Bollinas, Miguel Gómez López, Manuel Moreno Sánchez, Antonio Girón Luna, Saúl Lizcaino Hernández and Benjamin Guillen Moreno. Thanks for the camaraderie and the unselfish hospitality that you gave us.


To Emiliano Nicolás Perrella and Enoc Jhamerrsson: for the convesations in between beers and the unforgettable burgers that we shared in Palenque along with family and friends.


To María: for sharing with me the sightseeing tour of the Palenque ruins and the dips in the waterfalls.


To Israel González: for giving us a place to spend the night on our way to the border with Guatemala.


To Kerim Obed Batres Aldama and Alexis Nehemias Galdamez Salgero: for the good vibes and for giving us an opportune bottle of fresh water when the sun was toasting us during our first kilometers in Guatemala.


To Walter Chiu and Carlos Emilio Ortiz: for the frozen beers that we shared in Flores.


To Luis Miguel, another life “adventurer”: Good trails in your road good friend!


To Patricia Garzona: for living us the contact to Miriam’s family, that welcomed us in Quetzaltenango.


To Miriam Bartlett, Marta Escobar and the resto of the family: for opening your home so we could enjoy a few days in peace and resting in Quetzaltenango.


To my brother Japhy: for your free spirit, your hungry mind and that friendship without barriers that took us through the roads south of Chiapas and Guatemala. I know that there are many more kilometers to ride together…



 Some statistics 

Days on the road: 309

Days on the bike: 183

Kilometers done: 15,551 km (1,500 on gravel)

Average kilometers per day: 84.98 km

Hours on the bike: 935h42m (38d20h42m)

Average speed: 16.62 km/h

Maximum speed: 81.5 km/h, descending Sunwapta Pass, Canadá (15-08-2007)

Meters climbed: 149,682 m

Maximum altitude: 3033 msnm, Alaska, on my way to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala (08-04-2008)

Adrenalin that flowed in our bodies with the tense atmosphere between Ocosingo and Palenque: too much!

Times that I was called gringo these days: 1.573 (perhaps more)